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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

I'm not a huge fan of ground beef but the recent reports of "Pink Slime" I've seen in recent months downright turn my stomach. It's just gross! What is "pink slime?" Known as "lean, finely-textured beef", this product is basically derived from beef trimmings - discarded pieces of fatty flesh, that are heated, spun in a centrifuge and treated with AMMONIA before being mixed back into ground beef. Ammonia? Yes, Ammonia. I've heard of the horrors of the common grocery store hot dog but now beef? Yes. And, this lovely beef is in our common grocery stores, fast food chains, even family friendly restaurants....oh, and school lunches. We are feeding our children ammonia for lunch? Well, I am feeding my child lunch from home but you know what I am saying. It's just scary that this low grade food product is present in 70% of the ground beef in our supermarkets.

Photo courtesy of Beef Products, Inc.

The recent media focus on this has caused a lot of outrage and hopefully, that will mean changes. McDonalds has recently issued a statement saying they will stop the use of ammonia hydroxide in their hamburger meat (I still won't be running out for a burger there anytime soon) so that is a step in the right direction.

I leave you with this: Get to know the food that you are putting into your body and your children's bodies. Ask questions. Shop locally. Connect with your farmers. If you can't afford organic, grass fed beef, look for alternatives. There are some scary things out there that we are consuming on a daily basis. We owe it to our bodies and our children's bodies.

3 comments:

Seriously disturbing. I think the most disturbing part of this whole thing is the fact that the fast food restaurants are no longer going to use this "pink slime" so the USDA bought it all up to use in the school lunches. I know that the public school lunch program was originally intended to use up the food that farmers couldn't sell at market before it went to waste, but this goes to an entirely new level of WTF!? Go watch Forks Over Knives and Food Inc :-)

I was just looking at another blog called 100 Days of Real Food and then I ran across your blog. I think I'm being told to rethink my grocery list. I'm a school teacher and we live 45 minutes away from school. My daughter is 5 and has to be up extremely early to get dressed and leave for school. She eats breakfast and lunch there. I think I may start making her breakfast and lunch everyday.